Early voting begins Monday for city runoff

The competition for the remaining Gainesville City Commission seat enters its final week with early voting starting Monday for the April 8 election.

By Cindy SwirkoStaff writer

The competition for the remaining Gainesville City Commission seat enters its final week with early voting starting Monday for the April 8 election.The race for at-large seat 2 is between Democrats Annie Orlando and Helen Warren. Warren collected 4,757 votes to Orlando's 4,641 in the March 11 general election. With five candidates on the ballot, neither Warren nor Orlando got more than 50 percent of the vote, so the April 8 runoff is needed to decide the winner.Both Warren and Orlando said they will try to reach as many voters as they can in the final week."I'm feeling pretty good. We stuck to the strategy of staying on the issues, just revved everything up more because of the tighter turnaround time," Orlando said. "We're going to keep doing what we are doing and do more of it."Warren said she wants to identify voters who didn't cast ballots in March and seek their support."We want to get those who didn't vote the first time. And those who did vote the first time, we want to make sure they get out and vote again," Warren said. "In addition to good luck, I need to get out the votes."Orlando brought in $14,844 in the two-week campaign finance reporting period that ended Friday. Her total for the entire campaign is $38,410.Among those contributing to Orlando during the period were former city commissioners Tony Domenech, Jim Painter, Mac McEachern and Mark Goldstein.Warren collected $12,560 in the two-week campaign finance reporting period that ended Friday. Her total for the entire campaign is $33,394.Among those contributing to Warren during the two-week period were current city commissioners Lauren Poe and Susan Bottcher, who lost a re-election bid to Craig Carter in March.Also contributing were Alachua County Tax Collector Von Fraser, former city commissioners Jeanna Mastrodicasa and Warren Nielsen, and former state representative and Alachua County commissioner Cynthia Chestnut.Voters throughout the city can go to the polls for the race, which will be the only contest on the ballot. Alachua County elections supervisor Pam Carpenter said 72,818 voters are eligible in the city.Early voting will be Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the County Administration Building, 12 SE First St., and at the Millhopper library, 3145 NW 43rd St.Carpenter said turnout may be higher for the runoff than for the March general election."While the city's general elections pull around a 15 percent turnout, the runoffs have been running about 16 percent, so we are seeing a slight uptick," Carpenter said. "Sometimes when you narrow the choices down, the people who feel very strongly one way or the other perhaps come out to vote in the second race."Voters must bring identification that has a photo and a signature to the polls for both early voting and on April 8.So far 1,633 absentee ballots have been filed. Carpenter said it is important that people voting absentee have an updated signature on file at the election office and that those mailing in their ballots sign the back of the envelope.